The Body on the Beach (The Weymouth Trilogy) (2 page)

She was awake
again
as soon as
he arose, despite it still being dark
outside. She could hear him stomp
ing about in the room next to hers,
sorting out his things
. She could hear
his door banging and his footsteps in
the corridor. They did not falter
as he passed her door. He just went. Then there
was
a pause. Presumably he was eating his bre
akfast. Then the kitchen
door creak
ed
open, and bang
ed loudly
shut
. Then silence again. He would be saddli
ng the horse. She listened some more
. Now she could hear
the
horse’s hooves as it cantered
up
the
track
way. Then she heard nothing. Only the silence of the morning and, far away, the
very
faint
mewing of seabirds along the coast
. She listened, lying totally still, for several minutes. Yes, he was gone and he had left her on her own.

At first she felt nothing.
She could hardly believe that he had
gone
. But as the minutes ticked by and the silence remained she began to realise that
it was true, that he was actually on his way
to Town
. He had packed his bag, eaten his breakfast, and gone off into the dawn. Then
,
slowly
but surely,
her feelings began to re
-emerge
. At first she felt
sad. Very, very sad.
This was not what was supposed to happen at all – for Giles to stomp off in a passion and leave her on her own. But t
hen, as she remembered all the hurts that he had
inflicted
over the past few weeks and months – the petty insults, the abuse, the downtreading, the viciousness – she started to feel a little stronger, started to look forward to the coming weeks with some optimism. After all, with Gile
s safely in London, she would feel
free to be herself once again – something she hadn’t
felt
able to be for many a long month. She could suit herself. She could take her dinner when she wanted it, not to suit h
is whim. She could sing to Bob
if she wanted
to
– allow him to make a noise and run about like other little boys. S
he could invite her acquaintance
round
without fear of him returning in a black passion, ordering them away, bullying her, threatening, shoving her around. But even these thoughts saddened her.
The man
was her
husband.
She had married
him
for love. She had so much love to give and she had thought that he would want it. He had told her that he did, before they were married,
yet
he – and he alone – had succeeded in squeezing that l
ove out of her until it had
all but
wilt
ed and died. And what of the future? He would come back at some time – probably. What would he be like then? Better? Or worse?

It was
on
th
at
very
morning
that Kathryn spied
the body on the beach
. I use the term ‘body’ somewhat loosely, as that is what it appeared to be at the time.
She had left the house at the first crack of dawn to take her favourite ramble down the hill to Preston
cove
, there to feel her spirits soothed by the rhythmic lapping of the now quietened wa
ters
. It was
as
she stood at the head of the rocks, staring out to se
a
, that she suddenly spotted it only a very few yards away from her.
The mass of seagulls, mewing excitedly overhe
ad, drew her attention
to it.
Kathryn was used to the sight of bodies
on the beach
and the crumpled form in almost indistinguishable clothing appeared little different from the
other
dozen or so that she had see
n
on the shore
in her lifetime. But
slipping cautiously
down the rocks
to take a
closer
look she suddenly realised that the body
was not a corpse. It
was
that of
a living man. This was not a difficult diagnosis. The body was actually emitting a weak moaning sound which Kathryn knew was most unlikely in a cadaver.

She approached it
across the rough pebbles
with some ca
ution
. After all, though the man looked harmless enough he was a stranger and may sti
ll hit out at her. But she need
n
’
t have worried. For one thing, he was totally oblivious to her presence, even as she stood over him, wondering what to do. For another, she realised that she was looking at a gentleman. Despite the
ir
outer casing of
rough
wet
grit
and their shapeless form resulting from saturation with
the
sea she could see that his shirt and breeches – the man wore no coat and no boots – w
ere of exquisite quality and, m
ost likely,
originally
of
quite
some style.

He was lying face down
on the pebbles
, shuddering with such intensity that Kathryn fleetingly thought that he might throw himself onto his feet
at any moment
. But then she realised that he was
freezing cold and was also
probably
finding it
difficult
to breathe
. So, tentatively and very, very gently she took hold of his head and turned it a little so that the nose
was open to
the air. She followed this by rolling his body likewise onto its side. This
occasioned some difficulty on her part
, as the gentleman was by no means insubstantial, but perhaps he gave her s
ome assistance
, for in the very moment of manoeuvring his legs into place she saw that his eyes were flickering open and
that
he
was watching her with glassy but sentient eyes.

Having got him into position Kathryn untied the cloak that she was wearing and tucked it securely around
him
. Then she got on her knees and looked at him.
He looked so weak and vulnerable,
lying on the cold March beach
,
that s
he felt the urge to comfort him, to assure him that, after what ever time he had spent in the
swirling
water, he was now perfectly safe
and secure
. So she did
just
what she would have done with little Bob. She gently stroked the fair hair above his ear, bent over to kiss his temple, and cradled his head in her arms.

She sat like this with him for a couple of minutes, wondering what to do now. She had walked a good half mile from Sandsford House to the beach and the country was wild and hilly.
From what she could see at the moment there was no way in which the gentleman would be able to walk such a way himself. But it was imperative to get him into the warmth, to strip off his sodden clothing
, to
see to any wounds, and she felt the need to do this as soon as she
reasonably
could. The nearest building
s were
her tenants’ cottage
s
. The two brothers who lived
in the first one
might yet
be about, for it was still very
early and they themselves quite elderly
, and the eldest
son in the second one, though still
a little
young
, was a strong, lusty lad well used, already, to manual work
. Perhaps they could assist her in carrying the gentleman into the warmth
of a
cottage, from whence he might more readily be transported
further up the trackway
and in
to Sandsford House.

The plan designed, Kathryn
fold
e
d a scrap of the
cloak under the man’s
head and laid it gently back onto the ground.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ she whispered, as the man looked enquiringly at her. ‘I need to fetch help. We
’
ll soon have you snug and warm inside.’

She was shivering herself by this time but a scramble up the rocks
,
with just
a brief glance
b
ehind her
before climb
ing a
s quickly as she could
up to
S
andsford Cottages
,
soon
warmed her
. The sight of a thin
wisp
of smoke emitting from the chimneys
gave her cause for optimism. She knocked tentatively on the
first cottage
door and poked her head inside. Just as she had hoped.
Mr
Gabriel and
Mr
Arthur were sitting by their fire, supping something indeterminate from rough
-looking
bowls. They
rose to greet
her
,
without surprise
,
with a tug of the forelock,
and invited her to join them.

‘I cannot just now,’ she told them, ‘
as I am come to request
your aid. I have found a gentleman on the beach. His ship must have gone down in the storm. He is alive, but only just, I think. I need you
r assistance
in getting him into
the
warm
th
.’

The two brothers immediately obliged.
Mr
Gabriel, the elder, who took responsibility for these things, took it upon himself to ask next door for some further manpower while
Mr
Arthur fished about for a blanket. Five minutes, no more, saw a team of three, plus Kathryn
and two small children
, endowed with
the
blanket
, hurrying back down towards the coastline and down the steep
rocky ledge
towards the water’s edge.

The gentleman had returned to a stupor
and was shivering violently
by the time they reached him but it was the work of only a very few minutes before they had him safely wrapped in the blanket and were edging him ca
refully up the rocks. A
few minutes more saw him safely deposited on the rug in front of
Mr
Gabriel and
Mr
Arthur’s
blazing
wood fire. Kathryn
took
the two small children back to the sanctity of next door
as the two old men and one young one stripped him of his wet clothing, vigorously rubbed him dry (which procedure also served to stimulate the gentleman himself into consciousness again), washed and dressed some deep wounds on his body and limbs, and proceeded to dress him in the spare smock and breeches which
Mr
Arthur reserved for
the extra
special days of the year.

‘You’d like some vittles, I suppose?’ asked
Mr
Gabriel, offering the gentleman his own bowl
containing the remnants of
the indeterminate mess
he called breakfast
. The gentleman managed a slight nod.
Mr
Gabriel tried to pass
the bowl
to him but he seemed quite
unable to take
it
for himself. Kathryn took it from him
instead
.
She crouched down next to him, cradled his head once more and offered a spoonful to his mouth. The mouth opened and accepted the breakfast gratefully. Kathryn had to smile as she saw the look of disgust on his face as the flavour – or, more probably,
the
lack of it - reached his tongue. She doubted that a gentleman like him would ever have had the misfortune to taste anything quite so unpalatable as this. Nevertheless, he was obviously ravenous for she managed to get him to accept a good few spoonsful before he shook his head
and closed his eyes once again
. She returned
the now almost-empty bowl to
Mr
Gabriel.
Mr
Gabriel
quickly
finished off the rem
ains
, licked the spoon, and put his bowl next to his brother’s on a
low
shelf near the hearth.